The Life Exchange
2003-07-31 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
archershipsRandom thoughts:
How do you judge whether a political reform has actually improved anything? Those who're afraid of advances in nanotechnology, biotechnology and other fields often wax apocalyptic about the risks these technologies pose. Frequently, they call for total bans on wide areas of research.
However, if medical progress stopped today, it's a near certainty that everyone alive right now will be dead in 150 years. So from the perspective of the people alive right now, the risk that say, somatic gene therapy technology will be used to construct virulent super-viruses that will destroy 50% of the population sometime in 100 years, must be weighed against the certainty that _without_ the gene therapy we will all be dead anyway in 150 years.
One possible measure of the success of any given political/regulatory reform is the change in the total national "healthy life-years" following the implementation of the given policy. A healthy life year is a year in which a person lives in total mental and physical health. Obviously, most people never reach that level of health in any given year. One person might live 90% of a healthy life year one year, 95% the next and so one. If such a person lives to be 100, they might live, say, 85 total "healthy life-years".
The problem however, is that you may have to wait a long time--lifetimes, perhaps--in order to know how a given cluster of government policies will affect the total national HLY's. How could we get useful information about the impact of government policy's on total national HLY's within a reasonable span of time?
Now, I have a strong personal interest in maximizing my own total HLY's. Suppose I could offer a prize certificate that said the following: "The bearer of this certificate will get $25.00 if Christopher M. Rasch lives in good health from January 1, 2004 to January 1, 2009." (With appropriate legalese to precisely define what to "live in good health" meant). Let's call these prizes Life Certificates or LIFEs for short. Now suppose that I created 10 of these Life Certificates and auctioned them off on the Life Exchange. Let's suppose that lot's of other people did the same.
The median value of the 5 year LIFEs at auction would then reflect the best guess of the Life Exchange traders of the likelihood of that population living for the next five years. The price of LIFE's with later pay dates--10, 20, 50, 100 years in the future--would give information about longer spans of time.
Now suppose that a proposed policy change caused the price of all LIFE's to drop. What would that say about the probable effect of that policy? Conversely, what if a given government policy caused median LIFE price to rise?
How do you judge whether a political reform has actually improved anything? Those who're afraid of advances in nanotechnology, biotechnology and other fields often wax apocalyptic about the risks these technologies pose. Frequently, they call for total bans on wide areas of research.
However, if medical progress stopped today, it's a near certainty that everyone alive right now will be dead in 150 years. So from the perspective of the people alive right now, the risk that say, somatic gene therapy technology will be used to construct virulent super-viruses that will destroy 50% of the population sometime in 100 years, must be weighed against the certainty that _without_ the gene therapy we will all be dead anyway in 150 years.
One possible measure of the success of any given political/regulatory reform is the change in the total national "healthy life-years" following the implementation of the given policy. A healthy life year is a year in which a person lives in total mental and physical health. Obviously, most people never reach that level of health in any given year. One person might live 90% of a healthy life year one year, 95% the next and so one. If such a person lives to be 100, they might live, say, 85 total "healthy life-years".
The problem however, is that you may have to wait a long time--lifetimes, perhaps--in order to know how a given cluster of government policies will affect the total national HLY's. How could we get useful information about the impact of government policy's on total national HLY's within a reasonable span of time?
Now, I have a strong personal interest in maximizing my own total HLY's. Suppose I could offer a prize certificate that said the following: "The bearer of this certificate will get $25.00 if Christopher M. Rasch lives in good health from January 1, 2004 to January 1, 2009." (With appropriate legalese to precisely define what to "live in good health" meant). Let's call these prizes Life Certificates or LIFEs for short. Now suppose that I created 10 of these Life Certificates and auctioned them off on the Life Exchange. Let's suppose that lot's of other people did the same.
The median value of the 5 year LIFEs at auction would then reflect the best guess of the Life Exchange traders of the likelihood of that population living for the next five years. The price of LIFE's with later pay dates--10, 20, 50, 100 years in the future--would give information about longer spans of time.
Now suppose that a proposed policy change caused the price of all LIFE's to drop. What would that say about the probable effect of that policy? Conversely, what if a given government policy caused median LIFE price to rise?
no subject
Date: 2003-07-31 07:20 pm (UTC)Weird. I was just thinking about this, in a sense. Saw Urinetown over the weekend (which is a whole long story that I won't get into here) but it left me wondering if a popularly-driven social revolution has ever left the people worse off than under the overthrown regime.
I don't know enough history to know, and I'm ashamed.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-31 07:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-31 08:34 pm (UTC)On one hand, the surest way to predict the future is to bring it about yourself, and terrorism is easy -- that's the biggest problem with it. So someone could invest in a terrorist act then bring it about, thus profiting from it. On the other hand, having a large personal investment in an attack might actually cause suspicion of you by the government -- which means that this money-making scheme wouldn't likely work, but would instead send you to prison. Also, the actual proposal limited an individual's stake in the market -- which would eliminate the kind of large profit that would make, say, blowing up a building worthwhile. This limit, however, would also have ruined the predictive ability of the market, so it's probably just as well they canned the project.
But consider other meta-effects. The whole point of the market was to predict terrorism -- if the value of a terrorism future went up, it would mean such an attack would be likely. Now, I presume they didn't just want to know this for fun, but rather to take action to prevent such an attack. Which means that investing in an attack would actually make it harder to carry out, by tipping off the government that it was likely to happen! So the "invest in your own bombing" approach might not be such a good idea. But once again, there are unforseen consequences here -- since investors know that a future's high value would result in government action to prevent that event, that knowlegde would lower the value of the future. It's like a time-travel paradox with a financial market.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-03 02:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-31 07:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-01 12:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-01 12:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-01 10:42 am (UTC)long life
Date: 2003-08-01 12:35 am (UTC)T.A.G.
Date: 2003-08-01 06:47 am (UTC)